Saturday, March 31, 2012

As the GOP establishment crowns Mitt Romney for president, increasing numbers of pragmatic Republican career politicians have decided that their job security requires surrendering the Culture War to the homosexualists.

It’s been one of the swiftest shifts in ideology and strategy for Republicans, as they’ve come nearly full circle on same-sex politics. What was once a front-and-center issue for rank-and-file Republicans — the subject of many hotly worded House and Senate floor speeches — is virtually a dead issue, as Republicans in Congress don’t care to have gay marriage litigated in the Capitol.

Even more than that, Republican leadership has evolved, too. It has quietly worked behind the scenes to kill amendments that reaffirm opposition to same-sex unions, several sources told POLITICO.

But there’s also a political strategy at work: Ask most House Republicans today if they have deep convictions about gay relationships, and it hardly registers.

National party operatives have taken notice. Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn and National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Pete Sessions all did fundraisers in the 2010 cycle with the national gay and lesbian GOP grass-roots organization, Log Cabin Republicans.

“There's something to be said for having a Republican who supports civil rights in this broader context, including sexual orientation,” said Romney. “When Ted Kennedy speaks on gay rights, he's seen as an extremist. When Mitt Romney speaks on gay rights, he's seen as a centrist and a moderate. It's a little like if Eugene McCarthy was arguing in favor of recognizing China, people would have called him a nut. But when Richard Nixon does it, it becomes reasonable. When Ted says it, it's extreme; when I say it, it's mainstream.”

From "Don’t Retreat, Re-aim" by Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, posted at National Review Online 3/14/12

Less than a year and a half after Republicans swept to the biggest midterm congressional landslide since Grover Cleveland’s second term, they are struggling against a president presiding over a struggling economy, rising gas prices, and an approval rating in the low 40s. Prospects for a Senate takeover, once a foregone conclusion, are now are tenuous. Even the newly won House majority is in jeopardy.

What has changed?

The 2010 Republican victories, and the tea-party movement that drove them, were based on a few critical issues: the crushing burden of our national debt; opposition to wasteful government spending, including bailouts and the stimulus; and a desire for limited constitutional government. It stood in opposition to the big-government nostrums of both the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations.

. . . only 38 percent [of those polled in February 2012] thought social issues such as abortion or gay marriage were important in this election. Even among Republicans, fewer than half were motivated by social issues.

. . . [There's a] behind-the-scenes fund-raising network whose goal is to legalize same-sex marriage from coast to coast. This emerging group of donors is not quite like any other fund-raising network that has supported gay-related issues over the past 40 years. They come from Hollywood, yes, but also from Wall Street and Washington and the corporate world; there are Republicans as well as Democrats; and perhaps most strikingly, longtime gay organizers said, there has been an influx of contributions from straight donors unlike anything they have seen before.

The Republican support for the effort largely began after Mr. Olson, a solicitor general under President George W. Bush, lent it his name. It accelerated with the fund-raising role of Ken Mehlman, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee and of Mr. Bush’s re-election campaign, who announced he is gay 18 months ago and has since helped raise close to $3 million by fishing in waters where gay organizers had rarely gone before.

As surprising — and encouraging — to organizers of the movement are the Wall Street names added to their roster. Prominent among them is Paul Singer, a hedge fund manager who is straight and chairman of the conservative Manhattan Institute. He has donated more than $8 million to various same-sex marriage efforts, in states including California, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York and Oregon, much of it since 2007

Friday, March 30, 2012

President Jimmy Carter has decided, over thirty years after holding the highest office of the land, that it would be politically advantageous for the Democrat party to drop its vehement support for abortion, but nonetheless, he says the Roe v. Wade ruling should stand.

“I think if the Democratic Party would adopt that policy that would be acceptable to a lot of people who are now estranged from our party because of the abortion issue.”-- President Jimmy Carter 3/29/12

No surprise: There's ZERO coverage of this story in the mainstream media.

Appearing on “The Laura Ingraham Show” Thursday to promote his book “NIV Lessons from Life Bible: Personal Reflections with Jimmy Carter,” former President Jimmy Carter addressed the ever-hot topic of abortion — encouraging fellow Democrats to tone down their focus on the issue.

“I never have believed that Jesus Christ would approve of abortions and that was one of the problems I had when I was president having to uphold Roe v. Wade and I did everything I could to minimize the need for abortions,” he said, explaining his attempts to streamline adoption and provide aid to poor women through the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children [WIC].

Carter, who does not believe abortions should be outlawed, told Ingraham that he is calling on Democrats to de-emphasize abortion in the party platform.

“I’ve signed a public letter calling for the Democratic Party at the next convention to espouse my position on abortion which is to minimize the need, requirement for abortion and limit it only to women whose life are in danger or who are pregnant as a result of rape or incest,” he said.

In August 2008, the Democratic Party approved a platform that mirrors President Barack Obama’s pro-abortion views.

“The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to choose a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay, and we oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right,” the platform reads.

The party has removed any language calling for abortions to be “rare,” or even “safe,” preferring to concentrate on keeping them legal.

The final aspect of the language hearkens to Obama’s pledge to Planned Parenthood in a July 2007 speech saying his first action as president would be signing the so-called Freedom of Choice Act. That’s a Congressional bill that would overturn every abortion limit nationwide from a ban on partial-birth abortions to parental notification laws.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Nearly every demographic of the western industrialized world points toward population decline -- be it birth rates, abortion rates, contraceptive usage, etc. At the root is the societal shift away from the traditional family (including marriage) in favor of transient relationships, as well as people simply living alone, which U.S. census figures show to be at least 28% of all households, or perhaps nearly one-third.

". . . it’s time to embrace new ideas about romance and family—and to acknowledge the end of “traditional” marriage as society’s highest ideal."-- Kate Bolick, The Atlantic

In 1950 9 percent of Americans, aout 4 million people lived alone. According to the 2010 census, those numbers have skyrocketed, with 31 million people, comprising about 28 percent of the households, are on our own.

. . . An honest look at how and why people are choosing the pleasure of their own company over that of sharing their homes would require us to reappraise the meaning and value of marriage as we currently define it.

. . . Given the extent to which their increasing numbers are driven by feminism and its fruits – more and better educational and professional opportunities for women, later first marriages, etc. – and the 3 million more women than men living alone, it’s no surprise the criticism has been largely directed at [those living alone].

. . . Discussing the book, Kleinenberg himself seems similarly deluded, saying he went from seeing the increasing numbers of people living alone as a social problem, to seeing it as a, “social experiment,” and endlessly repeating his apparently astonishing discovery that people who live alone aren’t necessarily tragic shut ins, but in fact, “tend to spend more time socializing with friends and neighbors than people who are married.”

Nearly a third of American households are made up of adults living by themselves, with no roommates, spouses, partners or family members in the household.

The increase in singleton living is most pronounced in metropolitan areas, Klinenberg says . . .

The reasons for the increase in adults living alone are many. First of all, Klinenberg says, rising prosperity in the last several decades meant more people could afford to live alone. Subsidized housing, in-home care and public transportation have all played a part in allowing more people to live solo. And as more women entered the paid labor market, "they gained the capacity to delay marriage and also to end a bad marriage without sentencing themselves to a lifetime of poverty or moving back into their families' homes," he says.

Technology -- starting with telephones and television -- provides another reason solo living has become more palatable to some. "When you add in Skype and Facebook and email and Meetup and Craigslist and all of the things on the Internet, suddenly you can be deeply connected to other people and ideas" even while living alone, Klinenberg says.

The age group that's experienced the biggest increase in singletons since the 1950s is the 18- to 34-year-olds, says Klinenberg. Many young adults choose to live with roommates when they first leave their parents homes or finish college. But living alone is a goal for many, especially when the excitement of coming home to roommates' surprise house guests has worn off.

When [Klinenberg] began this seven-year project, he thought like most sociologists think, that society was going to hell in a handbasket. . . . But what started as "alone in America" his original hypothesis . . . became something completely opposite.

Klinenberg found living alone on the rise - by choice. . . .

But America is not the leader in living alone. Scandinavian countries such as Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway have more than 40 percent living in one-person households. In Stockholm, the number is 60 percent.

We seem to be "puzzling over how to live now. We are creating a new way of living ... of organizing our personal lives that we have never done before as a species," he concluded.

It's long been known that elderly people are more prone to depression and other mental-health problems if they live on their own. New research suggests the same pattern may also be found in younger, working-age adults.

In a study of nearly 3,500 men and women ages 30 to 65, researchers in Finland found that people who lived alone were more likely that their peers to receive a prescription for antidepressant drugs.

"Living alone may be considered a mental-health risk factor," says lead author Laura Pulkki-Råback, Ph.D., a lecturer at the University of Helsinki's Institute of Behavioral Sciences. The study was published today in the journal BMC Public Health.

"People living alone were more cynical in their attitudes," she explains. "Being cynical and living alone may predispose to hopelessness and negative feelings, ultimately leading to depression."

On the other hand, she adds, "Cynical people may also have ended up living alone because they are difficult to deal with."

“[Living alone] has a real value to people and they’re willing to find a way to afford it,” says Klinenberg.

In addition to [higher] housing costs, solo-livers generally pay more for utilities, telephone service, and groceries, although Klinenberg points out that grocers are increasingly adding more options for single-sized purchases and prepackaged meals for one.

[Klinenberg says:] Living alone is especially desirable to young adults who increasingly delay getting married and having children. They see going solo as a key way to become an adult. For them, the choice to live alone is often the choice not to live with roommates or their parents. They are especially likely to make sacrifices in other parts of their lives so they can get the privacy, anonymity, and control that comes from having a place of your own.

That’s true for older adults, too. They’re paying an enormous premium to live in assisted living facilities. It gives the experience of going solo while being connected to a world of service providers and companions. Families literally move themselves close to bankruptcy to make sure their older relatives have the luxury of living alone as long as they can. That’s a huge change from 100 years ago, where the majority of widows and widowers lived with family.

In the 1990s, Stephanie Coontz, a social historian at Evergreen State College in Washington, noticed an uptick in questions from reporters and audiences asking if the institution of marriage was falling apart.

What Coontz found was even more interesting than she’d originally expected. In her fascinating Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage, she surveys 5,000 years of human habits, from our days as hunters and gatherers up until the present, showing our social arrangements to be more complex and varied than could ever seem possible. She’d long known that the Leave It to Beaver–style family model popular in the 1950s and ’60s had been a flash in the pan, and like a lot of historians, she couldn’t understand how people had become so attached to an idea that had developed so late and been so short-lived.

“Today we are experiencing a historical revolution every bit as wrenching, far-reaching, and irreversible as the Industrial Revolution,” she wrote.

What emerges over time, for those who live alone, is an at-home self that is markedly different — in ways big and small — from the self they present to the world. We all have private selves, of course, but people who live alone spend a good deal more time exploring them.

For people who are comfortable and even good at living alone, there is often another concern: a fear that the concrete has set, so to speak, on their domestic habits and that it will be difficult to go back to living with someone else.

If the Missouri House and Gov. Jay Nixon agree, later this year it will be a crime to “disrupt a house of worship.”

Senate President Pro Tem Rob Mayer, R-Dexter, told colleagues a person could be charged with the crime if he or she “knowingly disturbs a building used for religious purposes by the use of profanity, by rude or indecent behavior or by making some unreasonable noises.”

He said the crime also could be charged if a person “intentionally or attempts to injure, intimidate, or interfere with any person lawfully exercising their right of religious freedom, or (are) seeking access to a house of worship, if they use force, threat or physical obstruction.”

The crime would be punishable by as long as six months in jail and a $500 fine, with repeat offenders facing increasingly harsher penalties.

Senate President Pro Tem Rob Mayer said he sponsored the legislation because there have been isolated incidents around the country of people disturbing worship services, though he did not cite any particular examples.

"It's something that you wouldn't think you'd have to come forth with," said Mayer, R-Dexter. "But we're getting some protests at mosques and synagogues and churches and even outside the church buildings on the actual church property."

Several other states already have similar laws, according to the National Criminal Justice Reference Service.

Saturday, March 24, 2012

The Religious Viewpoints Antidiscrimination Act (HB 3616 or SB3632), which passed the legislature with only one dissenting vote, will allow faculty and staff to participate, at school, in religious activity initiated by students.

Sponsors of the bill brought it in part to support “See You at the Pole” gatherings, where students and their parents gather at school flag poles to pray.

The measure was approved 29-1 [in the Senate]. The companion bill unanimously passed the House 93-0 earlier this month. Before it can go to the governor, the measure must go back to the House to approve an amendment that was added.

The legislation allows school personnel to participate in such activities as long as they don’t carry into the classroom or conflict with the assignments of the participant.

The activities must also be student-initiated and be held before or after school. The amendment clarifies that teachers can attend events in cases where a school may rent out its facilities to a church or faith-based organization.

The right of students to pray or make other expressions of faith has long been upheld in the courts. But three Middle Tennessee districts ran afoul of federal law in recent years over allowing parents or outside groups to promote religion on campus.

On its website, the ACLU said [the] bill is neither necessary nor constitutional and would subject students to unwanted proselytizing, prayer and preaching and open districts to violating constitutional guarantees.

The legislation would require school districts to implement a policy to create a "limited public forum" before campus events such as the beginning of a school day or before a football game. Select students would be eligible to speak freely at these forums, including about religion, and the school district would issue a disclaimer before those speeches.

Under the bill, school districts also would require teachers to treat a student's faith-based answers to school assignments the same as secular answers. But while the bill allows faith-based answers, those responses must be justified like any other student's.

Monday's ruling was a rebuff to the Alpha Delta Chi sorority and Alpha Gamma Omega fraternity, Christian organizations at Cal State, San Diego, that had sought to challenge a 2010 Supreme Court ruling that official student organizations within the university system could not receive funding unless they have a valid non-discriminatory policy of accepting all students. The decision allows a 9th Circuit Court ruling upholding the university policy, to stand, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Monday.

The CSU system denies official recognition and funding to student organizations that discriminate on the basis of race, religion, gender, national origin and sexual orientation. The university's objective is to "remove access barriers imposed against groups that have historically been excluded," rather than suppress free speech, said Judge Harry Pregerson in the appeals court's 3-0 ruling in August.

The Christian groups at San Diego State argued that the policy itself was discriminatory for two reasons: The ban on gender-based admissions doesn't apply to sororities and fraternities, and secular organizations are allowed to make viewpoint-based distinctions - an immigrants'-rights group, for example, can exclude opponents of immigrants' rights and still receive funding.

"The university did not tell the Democratic club it must be led by a Republican, or the vegetarian club it must be led by a meat-eater, but it did tell Christian groups that they must allow themselves to be led by atheists," David Cortman of the Alliance Defense Fund, a lawyer for the religious groups, said Monday.

As a result of the court ruling, he said, "the supposed marketplace of ideas at San Diego State University will remain a stronghold for censorship."

The San Diego State policy was challenged by the Alpha Delta Chi sorority and Alpha Gamma Omega fraternity, both of which require their members to be Christians. The Supreme Court's rebuff Monday left intact a ruling last August by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco that upheld the university policy.

In 2005 Alpha Delta Chi, a Christian sorority at the school, and Alpha Gamma Omega-Epsilon, a Christian fraternity, challenged the university’s “non-discrimination” policy requiring that in order to receive campus recognition and funding, Christian student groups could not require members to sign a statement of faith — a rule the groups contend opens the door for individuals with non-Christian views to hold leadership positions.

The result of that far-reaching verdict is that established Christian groups like InterVarsity or Campus Crusade for Christ, which rely on strong Christian leadership for their gospel mission, “now run the risk of being kicked off campus if they say that only Christian students may hold leadership positions,” wrote [Christian commentator Chuck] Colson. He challenged that such a policy “makes no sense. It’s like forcing campus atheists to make Billy Graham their president! Of course we would welcome nonbelievers to hear the gospel, but they can’t run our groups!”

Colson noted a handful of prominent cases in which the High Court’s ruling has emboldened university officials to target Christian groups at their schools. Ironically, those cases are all concentrated in the nation’s “Bible belt.” For example, Nashville’s Vanderbilt University now boasts a policy that bans Christian groups on campus from requiring their student leaders to embrace the group’s core beliefs. “Vanderbilt’s Intervarsity Graduate Christian Fellowship is in the thick of the battle there,” Colson noted.

If groups refused to adopt the university's policy, they would not be eligible for things like student funding, posting signs on campus, reserving office and meeting spaces, using the school name or mascot, and promoting themselves on the university's website.

Both the Alpha Gamma Omega fraternity and Alpha Delta Chi sorority have struggled to make ends meet by refusing to adopt the policy, which they believe is unconstitutional.

"There is no 'subsidy' to religious groups when every student group shares in the same system of benefits set up by the school," [ADF's David Cortman] said. "It is more accurately an 'equal access' principle."

Universities are in many ways a microcosm of society, Cortman further noted. For him, the subsidy argument would be similar to claiming that religious organizations or churches are "free to exist" but cannot use a municipality's water and sewer system, be protected by the police or fire department, or even use public roads for transportation – even though all other organizations are allowed to do so.

Thursday, March 22, 2012

A report by the federal CDC National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) shows that the best chance for a decades-long, first-time marriage is a college-educated religious couple without previous illegitimate children, AND who did NOT cohabit prior to a formal wedding engagement.

Note (below) how many ways the mainstream media spins the statistics in this government report.

. . . although relatively few - one in five - first marriages fail within five years, they are likely to be associated with characteristics like marrying as a teen, coming from a single-parent home and not having a child together after marriage.

Conversely, marriages that reached their 20-year anniversary were associated with having a college degree, having a religious life, not cohabiting before marriage and not having previous marriages or children from previous relationships, the report said.

. . . the new data show that of married women with a high-school education, 59 percent divorced before their 20th anniversary. In contrast, 78 percent of married women with bachelor’s degrees reached their 20th anniversary.

“The only good news is that federal data also suggest that married couples with children have seen their divorce rates come down since the 1980s,” [said sociology professor W. Bradford Wilcox, who also directs the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia].

Living together before marriage has been a long-growing trend. In the late 1960s, only about 10 percent of U.S. couples moved in together first, and they ended up with higher divorce rates.

Today, about 60 percent of couples live together before they first marry.

The study found those who were engaged and living together before the wedding were about as likely to have marriages that lasted 15 years as couples who hadn’t lived together.

But what about the couples who were living together but weren’t engaged? The new study found marriage was less likely to survive to the 10- and 15-year mark among couples who weren’t engaged when they lived together — findings similar to earlier research.

Commitment has made a difference. In interviews with some women who have been married 20 years or more after living with their spouse first, firm belief in a future together was a common theme.

Between 1982 and 2010, the percentage of women under the age of 45 living with a partner outside of marriage nearly quadrupled, from 3% to 11%, according to the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS).

56% of first marriages among men and 52% among women now end in the first two decades.

By age 40, close to 9 out of 10 women and 8 out of 10 men will have married at least once.

More than 2 out of 3 Asian women (69%) were likely to still be married after 20 years, compared to around half of white women (54%) and just over a third (37%) of African-American women.

The data, out today from the National Center for Health Statistics, are based on 22,682 in-person interviews from 2006 to 2010 with men and women (not couples) ages 15 to 44. Among the 12,279 women studied, the percentage of never-marrieds rose to 38% from 33% in 1995.

The highest percentage of women who have never married was among blacks (55%), followed by U.S.-born Hispanics (49%), Asians (39%) and whites (34%).

The percentage of women who said they were in a first marriage declined to 36%, from 44% in 1982. Similar data on men were not collected until 2002.

The data reflect not only the "delay in getting married for the first time" but also "that more people are cohabitating," says Galena Rhoades of the University of Denver's Center for Marital and Family Studies.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

A St. Louis catholic business owner, represented by the American Center for Law and Justice, has filed a ground-breaking federal lawsuit against President Obama's Department of Health and Human Services (headed by Kathleen Sebelius), requesting a permanent injunction on the mandate requiring his health insurance to provide his employees free contraceptives, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs.

Frank O'Brien, who owns O'Brien Industrial Holdings, said the birth control rule violates his religious beliefs, according to the lawsuit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in St. Louis.

"He is a very devout Catholic. He's got a religious statue in the lobby of his office," said O'Brien's attorney, Francis Manion. "That's what religious diversity and pluralism is all about. There are certain companies that you know don't do certain things."

The company's mission and values are "to make our labor a pleasing offering to the Lord while enriching our families and society," according to its website. "Our conduct is guided by the Golden Rule and the Ten Commandments. We will not discriminate based on anyone's personal belief system."

Missouri also requires businesses that provide health insurance to include contraception coverage but allows for more broad-based religious and moral exemptions.

The Obama administration’s controversial birth-control mandate saw its first legal challenge Thursday from an employer not affiliated with any religious institution.

“The [Department of Health and Human Services] mandate tells people like Frank O’Brien that they have to choose between conducting their business in a manner consistent with their moral values, or conducting their business in a manner consistent with the government’s values,” the ACLJ said in a statement. “The constitution does not allow the government to impose such a choice.”

The Senate last month defeated an amendment, sponsored by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), that would have exempted all employers from coverage mandates that violate their religious or moral beliefs.

. . . the recent federal health care mandate, which will require businesses like O'Brien's to include full coverage of contraception, abortion-inducing drugs and sterilizations, clearly goes against those values. That's why O'Brien, a member of St. Gerard Majella Parish in Kirkwood, filed a lawsuit against the federal government March 15 in U.S. District Court in St. Louis.

O'Brien Industrial Holdings LLC is the holding company of the Christy family of companies, which explore, mine and process refractory and ceramic raw materials, with its products going to more than 40 countries. There are 87 employees.

"The fact of the matter is, most CEOs of companies don't really know exactly what's in their health plans — like most employees," said Manion. "The policy doesn't say we don't cover birth control. It just says we have a prescription drug benefit." Manion cited another example of an organization of women religious, who, up until two years ago didn't know that their health plan covered contraceptives.

Because the health plan isn't up for renewal until next January, O'Brien would have to wait to change the plan until then. But under the federal mandate, he won't be able to do that, said Manion.

A statement of the company's values begins with the following: "Integrity. Our conduct is guided by the Golden Rule and the Ten Commandments. We will not discriminate based on anyone's personal belief system."

The lawsuit contends that the HHS mandate "imposes a substantial burden on Plaintiffs' free exercise of religion by coercing Plaintiffs to choose between conducting their business in accordance with their religious beliefs or paying substantial penalties to the government."

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

President Obama's Food and Drug Administration has authorized StemCells, Inc. to use brain tissue from the remains of unborn children killed through abortion for clinical trials with more than a dozen patients to determine the effect on age-related macular degeneration of the eye.

Separately, President Obama's Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has OKd the use of aborted babies to produce artificial flavor enhancers for PepsiCo products.

StemCells, Inc. is engaged in the research, development, and commercialization of cell-based therapeutics and tools for use in stem cell-based research and drug discovery. . . .

The Company is also conducting a Phase I/II clinical trial in chronic spinal cord injury in Switzerland and has received authorization from the FDA to initiate a Phase I/II clinical trial in dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD). In addition, the Company is pursuing preclinical studies of its HuCNS-SC cells in Alzheimer's disease. StemCells also markets stem cell research products, including media and reagents, under the SC Proven(R) brand.

The Food and Drug Administration has approved experiments using brain tissue from aborted unborn babies to treat macular degeneration. StemCells Inc. will inject fetal brain stem cells into the eyes of up to 16 patients to study the cells’ effect on vision.

In its press release announcing the clinical trial, StemCells Inc. was careful to refer to the fetal brain material as “purified human neural stem cell product” or HuCNS-SC cells, rather than “fresh human fetal brain tissue,” a description which can be found elsewhere on its website.

“StemCells Inc. is not using embryonic stem cells. A five-day-old human being at the embryonic stage does not have a brain, but a fetus at 10 or 20 weeks of development with visible fingers, toes and ears has a functioning brain,” said MCCL [Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life] Executive Director Scott Fischbach. “Developing human beings in the womb are treated simply as raw material for laboratory experimentation by StemCells Inc. and other companies seeking to monetize aborted unborn children.”

The misleadingly-named Birth Defects Research Laboratory at the University of Washington in Seattle is known within the research community as a top government distributor of fetal tissue. The lab has been sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for over four decades, according to a report in WORLD Magazine. The Puget Sound Business Journal stated that the lab “in 2009 filled more than 4,400 requests for fetal tissue and cell lines.”

Dr. David Prentice, an internationally recognized expert on stem cells and cloning, cites trials in which fetal stem cells have been used unsuccessfully to treat Parkinson’s disease. The New York Times called the outcome of a 2001 study “devastating” after “the patients writhed and jerked uncontrollably.” Another large clinical trial published in 2003 showed similar results.

“The use of morally illicit material in the biomedical industry violates the ‘do no harm’ principle that has governed the practice of medicine for millennia,” Fischbach said. “Adult stem cells offer the ethical and efficacious alternative. Unborn babies deserve dignity, not dissection and destruction.”

As reported last year in The New American, the [PepsiCo] shareholders had filed a resolution with the SEC after Pepsi ignored tens of thousands of concerned pro-life individuals who had expressed their disgust and opposition to its contracting with Senomyx, a biotech company that tests its food additive products using a process that includes fetal cells from aborted babies.

In a decision delivered by letter February 28, the SEC said that Pepsi’s research and development agreement with Senomyx, which includes the use of aborted fetal remains in flavor enhancement research, falls under “ordinary business operations” for the soft drink company. According to LifeSiteNews.com, the SEC decision came in response to a 36-page document submitted by Pepsi through its attorneys in January 2012. “In that filing, PepsiCo pleaded with the SEC to reject the shareholders’ resolution filed in October 2011 that the company ‘adopt a corporate policy that recognizes human rights and employs ethical standards which do not involve using the remains of aborted human beings in both private and collaborative research and development agreements,’” reported the pro-life news site.

Debi Vinnedge of Children of God for Life, which had originally exposed the relationship between Pepsi and Senomyx, said that she was “appalled by the apathy and insensitivity” of PepsiCo and the Obama administration’s SEC. “We’re not talking about what kind of pencils PepsiCo wants to use,” she said in a statement. “We are talking about exploiting the remains of an aborted child for profit. Using human embryonic kidney to produce flavor enhancers for their beverages is a far cry from routine operations!”

Monday, March 19, 2012

Once again demonstrating that the goal of the Gay Agenda is destruction of the Church, when an Ontario Catholic school distributed an anti-bullying pamphlet encouraging tolerance of homosexual behavior, a lesbian parent of one student started a ground-swell movement to force the school toward full acceptance and glorification of homosexuality.

Parents at a Catholic School in Bowmanville are up in arms after a pamphlet that was meant to promote equality among different races and sexual orientations is being criticized as doing the opposite.

The pamphlet titled “The Colour of Equity,” was sent to teachers by the Peterborough Victoria Northumberland and Clarington Catholic District School Board, in an effort to stop bullying and provide teachers with ways to promote equality in the classroom.

Some members of the community though are criticizing the pamphlet for its description of homosexuality. Though the pamphlet does denounce the bullying and targeting of homosexuals, it calls the sexual preference “objectively disordered.”

“The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided.”

As a Catholic, a mom and a lesbian, Ann Tesluk . . . mother of two children at St. Joseph’s Catholic Elementary School was delighted when the school board sent out a lively 20-page equity blueprint last month to help teachers tackle all kinds of discrimination, from race and religion to disability and sexual orientation.

Then she read the fine print.

It felt like “stepping back into the Dark Ages.”

There, in the otherwise upbeat chapter “Rainbow is for Sexual Orientation,” which urges teachers to treat homophobic language as harshly as racial slurs and encourages the use of gay guest speakers and the reading of gay-positive texts, sat an excerpt from the Catholic Church’s catechism #2358.

To Tesluk, who has a son in Grade 3 and a daughter in Grade 6, such talk “creates an unsafe learning environment. We know gay students are being bullied to death.

The pamphlet in question, however, is controversial from more than one perspective. While quoting the Catechism that the homosexual inclination is “objectively disordered”, the pamphlet also misrepresents Catholic teaching in numerous ways. The pamphlet calls on schools to highlight homosexual role models and familiarize students with terms like “LGBTQQ” and “two-spirited.” It indicates that Canada legalized same-sex “marriage” in 2005 without mentioning that the Church opposes such unions.

Greg Reeves, director of education for the Peterborough Victoria Northumberland Clarington Catholic District School Board (PVNCCDSB), told LifeSiteNews that they have had enough complaints about the pamphlet, called The Colour of Equity, to give the wording a “relook” to see if they can explain the Church’s teaching better.

Reeves said the complaints are largely a result of confusion over the Church’s teaching, saying that the Catechism’s “phraseology is old.”

“As it is right now, it is derogatory, patronizing and discriminatory, not to mention lacking in scientific evidence,” [Tesluk] says. “Any child who reads this will be faced, at minimum, with a negative attitude towards homosexuality,” she continues. “Isn’t this what we are trying to prevent? How can we allow any school in Ontario to teach this to our children?”

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Presidential candidate Rick Santorum says that President Obama's refusal to enforce obscenity and anti-Internet pornography laws has resulted in a pandemic that harms children. In response, the Obama-empowered pornography industry, which accounts for over 90% of Internet trade, is scoffing at Santorum, telling him to butt out of their gold mine.

On his website, Santorum says he’s “concerned about the widespread distribution of illegal obscene pornography” and accuses the current Justice Department of seeming to “favor pornographers over children and families.”

Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator and social conservative, defended his comments, insisting on CNN's "State of the Union" that prosecution of such cases was much more rigorous under the Bush administration. He provided no facts or statistics to back up his claim.

“My conclusion is, they have not put a priority on prosecuting these cases and in doing so, they are exposing children to tremendous amount of harm,” Santorum said.

The former Pennsylvania senator argues that "current federal 'obscenity' laws prohibit distribution of hardcore [obscene] pornography on the Internet, on cable/satellite TV, on hotel/motel TV, in retail shops and through the mail or by common carrier."

“The Obama administration has turned a blind eye to those who wish to preserve our culture from the scourge of pornography and has refused to enforce obscenity laws,” the statement read in part. “While the Obama Department of Justice seems to favor pornographers over children and families, that will change under a Santorum administration.”

“A wealth of research is now available demonstrating that pornography causes profound brain changes in both children and adults, resulting in widespread negative consequences,” the statement noted. “Addiction to pornography is now common for adults and even for some children. The average age of first exposure to hardcore Internet pornography is now 11. Pornography is toxic to marriages and relationships. It contributes to misogyny and violence against women. It is a contributing factor to prostitution and sex trafficking.”

[Santorum] hasn't made any notable mention of the pornography issue on the campaign trail, and it's one of several position papers he's given on the issue section of his campaign website.

Film production company execs and XXX actors are railing against the Republican presidential candidate's recent call to ban hardcore pornography, calling it an infringement on free speech, a threat to their livelihood, and a pathetic ploy to get votes.

Pornography in America is an obscene "pandemic," Santorum's website says. "It contributes to misogyny and violence against women. It is a contributing factor to prostitution and sex trafficking."

Joanna Angel, who has appeared in numerous adult videos and is the owner of XXX-film production company Burning Angel Entertainment, called Santorum's proposal "infuriating."

Ryan Keely, an adult film actress and sex advice columnist, said Santorum's declared war on smut "is clearly an attempt to excite his conservative base. There is no way pornography will be shut down."

. . . despite pornography's ubiquity, there's no reason US attorneys can't step up prosecutions of people who flout anti-obscenity laws, especially against domestic purveyors. As recently as 2006 a federal jury found an Arizona company guilty of breaking obscenity laws for distributing hardcore pornography across state lines. The FBI announced 38 child pornography-related guilty verdicts or pleas this month alone.

“In most parts of the country, a lot of pornography on the Internet would plausibly be seen as obscene,” UCLA constitutional law professor Eugene Volokh told the Daily Caller, which publicized the overlooked Santorum position paper this week. “You can’t prosecute them all … but you can find certain types of pornography that are sufficiently unpopular” for easy convictions, he told the conservative news site

And while Santorum's criticism of the Obama administration for failing to bring more obscenity cases to court may or may not be fair, the administration's tack, legal scholars say, follows a general pattern dating back to at least 2000, a point where, because of liberalized attitudes wrought by the Internet, it became clear to many prosecutors that an all-out war on pornography that depicts consensual sex would be difficult to win.

As one of America’s most revered sex symbols . . . [Raquel Welch] told Men’s Health Magazine in an interview posted online March 8 that today’s sex-saturated culture had sapped the meaning out of sex, and damaged countless men through the pornography industry, which she called “an exploitation of the poor male’s libidos.”

“It’s just dehumanizing. And I have to honestly say, I think this era of porn is at least partially responsible for it,” Welch said of rampant sexual addiction. “Where is the anticipation and the personalization? It’s all pre-fab now. You have these images coming at you unannounced and unsolicited. It just gets to be so plastic and phony to me.

“I just imagine them sitting in front of their computers, completely annihilated. They haven’t done anything, they don’t have a job, they barely have ambition anymore,” said the 71-year-old actress. “And it makes for laziness and a not very good sex partner. Do they know how to negotiate something that isn’t pre-fab and injected directly into their brain?”

Saturday, March 17, 2012

An Indiana state agency has confiscated food from a local food pantry that offers to pray with needy clients, but after action by a congressman, the USDA says it may consider allowing Indiana to restart the food supply.

Federal officials are reviewing whether a southern Indiana pantry violates food distribution rules by asking its clients if they want to pray.

USDA spokesman Alan Shannon says agency officials will hold a teleconference Friday with state officials on the actions of Community Provisions of Jackson County in Seymour. Food bank officials will also take part in that call.

Shannon says groups receiving food from the USDA can still engage in religious activities as long as that doesn't create a barrier to people receiving food.

Community Provisions of Jackson County in Seymour, Ind., a faith-based food pantry supported by local churches, can no longer provide clients with federal government commodities due to its prayer policy.

Paul Brock, director of Community Provisions since December of 1997, told The Christian Post on Wednesday that the problem began in late 2011.

"The controversy began during my Nov. 29, 2011 inspection by Gleaners Food Bank. They are the distribution site the state has chosen and they are the ones responsible to do the inspections," said Brock.

According to Gleaners, faith-based food pantries connected to the government cannot require religious services or teaching to clients of their facilities. However, Brock has argued that Community Provisions' offering of prayer are voluntary and that clients are served regardless of whether or not they agree to pray.

Paul Brock, director of Community Provisions of Jackson County, said he was "stunned" to learn that officials from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) will re-examine his situation following the loss of his portion of food from The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP), roughly 15 percent of his stock.

Gleaners took over administration of the federal commodities program in October. Brock has operated Community Provisions, which serves roughly 2,000 families annually, since 1997 and said he never had a problem before Gleaners became the administrator of the federal program.

Friday, March 16, 2012

The New York Times printed an ad from a Madison, Wisconsin-based atheist organization urging liberal and nominal Catholics to quit the Church, but when the Times was tested by a media watchdog with an ad suggesting the same to Muslims, the Times refused to print it.

“Will it be reproductive freedom, or back to the Dark Ages? Do you choose women and their rights, or Bishops and their wrongs? Whose side are you on, anyway?”-- Asks the ad by the Freedom from Religion Foundation

. . . when Pamela Geller, a blogger and executive director of Stop Islamization of America, offered the same $39,000 for the Old Gray Lady to run an ad making a similar appeal to Muslims, the newspaper passed.

Geller said her anti-Shariah ad was designed to mimic the anti-Catholic one. In calling on Muslims to quit their religion, the ad asked “Why put up with an institution that dehumanizes women and non-Muslims … [do] you keep identifying with the ideology that threatens liberty for women and menaces freedom by slaughtering, oppressing and subjugating non-Muslims… Join those of us who put humanity above the vengeful, hateful and violent teachings of Islam’s ‘prophet.’”

Times spokeswoman Eileen Murphy referred requests for comment to the letter the paper sent Geller when it declined to publish the ad.

"It is our belief that fallout from running this [anti-Islam] ad now could put US troops and civilians in the region in danger and we would like to avoid that."

The anti-Catholic ad was run without fear. . . . Although there was criticism over the nature of the ad, there were no threats of violence and no calls for crusades.

Meanwhile, Catholics have criticized the Times of promoting an anti-Catholic agenda. Bill Donahue, Catholic League president, said the Time's motivation to publish one article but not the other was the result of "either bigotry or fear and they've painted themselves into that corner."

Catholics do not have a history of attacking journalists, however militant Islamists do. At least two Muslims have been jailed for threatening media professionals and other journalists and authors have gone into hiding to avoid backlash for their criticizing Islam.

. . . Pamela Geller of AtlasShrugs.com . . . created [the anti-Islam] ad in the same format, with the same message, only this one said, “It’s Time to Quit Islam.”

“The craven quislings at the New York Times rejected our ad,” Geller reported.

Then in an update, she said:

Bob Christie, senior vice president of corporate communications for the New York Times, just called me and advised me that they would be accepting my ad, but considering the situation on the ground in Afghanistan, now would not be a good time, as they did not want to enflame an already hot situation. They will be reconsidering it for publication in “a few months.”

So I said to Mr. Christie, “Isn’t this the very point of the ad? If you feared the Catholics were going to attack the New York Times building, would you have run that ad?”

It is time to make known your dissent from the Catholic Church, in light of the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops’ ruthless campaign endangering the right to contraception. If you’re part of the Catholic Church, you’re part of the problem.

Why are you propping up the pillars of a tyrannical and autocratic, woman-hating, sex-perverting, antediluvian Old Boys Club? Why are you aiding and abetting a church that has repeatedly and publicly announced a crusade to ban contraception, abortion and sterilization, and to deny the right of all women everywhere, Catholic or not, to decide whether and when to become mothers? When it comes to reproductive freedom, the Roman Catholic Church is Public Enemy Number One. Think of the acute misery, poverty, needless suffering, unwanted pregnancies, social evils and deaths that can be laid directly at the door of the Church’s antiquated doctrine that birth control is a sin and must be outlawed.

You’re better than your church. So why? Why continue to attend Mass? Tithe? Why dutifully sacrifice to send your children to parochial schools so they can be brainwashed into the next generation of myrmidons (and, potentially, become the next Church victims)? For that matter, why have you put up with an institution that won’t put up with women priests, that excludes half of humanity?